Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/43

xxxvi monplace and void of incident. Of the few exceptions to this rule I have written in the later pages of this book.

The suggestion that the nineteenth century cannot yet be judged as to its final effect in many directions has already been made, and of nothing is this more true than of its Art. Of one phase of this period, however, we may speak with confidence. No other century of which we know the history has seen so many changes—such progress, or such energy of purpose so largely rewarded as in the century we are considering.

To one who has lived through more than three score years of this period, no fairy tale is more marvellous than the changes in the department of daily life alone.

When I recall the time when the only mode of travel was by stage-coach, boat, or private carriage—when the journey from Boston to St. Louis demanded a week longer in time than we now spend in going from Boston to Egypt—when no telegraph existed—when letter postage was twenty-five cents and the postal service extremely primitive—when no house was comfortably warmed and women carried foot-stoves to unheated churches—when candles and oil lamps were the only means of "lighting up," and we went about the streets at night with dim lanterns—when women spun and wove and sewed with their hands only, and all they accomplished was done at the hardest—when in our country a young girl might almost as reasonably attempt to reach the moon as to become an artist—remembering all this it seems as if an army of magicians must incessantly have waved their wands above